


Severance

by lavellanpls



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Break Up, F/M, Gen, Heartbreak, Post-Break Up, Reaction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-15 06:41:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15407241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavellanpls/pseuds/lavellanpls
Summary: Companion reactions to Lavellan's breakup.01.Vivienne02.Sera03.Dorian04.Iron Bull





	1. Vivienne.

**Vivienne.**

It was but a comment made in passing.

Their party was out scouring the emerald hills of the Graves in an attempt to track down a rumored mosaic tile, the final piece to Lavellan’s collection. They were picking through overgrown ruins when a crumbling wall bearing a nude elven mural had the Iron Bull snickering.

“I’m starting to notice a theme with these things,” he smirked. “So at what point in elven history did you people actually start wearing clothes?”

Varric suggested perhaps they never did _—“Maybe these days they just save all the naked frolicking for home”—_ and Vivienne made some dry remark to Lavellan asking how much “clandestine nude frolicking” her dearly beloved elven apostate partook in. She expected to be met with a witty response.

Instead the Inquisitor kept her stare pinned straight ahead, attention focused on navigating through the underbrush. “He’s not my beloved,” she remarked flatly. She elaborated no further.

Bull and Varric both glanced her way with the same dubious stare, but kept their mouths smartly shut. Vivienne followed along behind her, and said nothing more.

Their next excursion took them to the Forbidden Oasis, this time with Solas in attendance, but something was…different.

Solas hung back when they traveled, trailing far behind the rest of the party while their normally boisterous Herald forged silently ahead. Vivienne watched without a word as Lilith bandaged up a hyena bite by herself at the campfire’s edge. Come nightfall she and Solas took separate tents. They exchanged no words with each other. Shared no glances. Vivienne still asked nothing.

 

It wasn’t until they returned to Skyhold that she brought it up. And even then, it was but a comment made in a passing. Solas was picking through a bookshelf in an empty alcove of the library when Vivienne swept by on her way to the rookery and suddenly stopped.

She spoke without looking back at him. “Did she end it, then?”

Solas’ reply was stiff. Frigid. “This is not your business, Enchanter.” And then, quieter: “…and no. The decision was mine.”

Vivienne gave a curt nod. Asked no questions. Showed no emotional investment beyond a sterile curiosity. “Likely for the best, no doubt. It was a foolish courtship to begin with.” Something in her voice thinned to a brittle edge. A rarely heard flare of uglier emotions. “She can do so much better than you.”

“Yes,” he placidly agreed. “She can.”

 

The next morning Solas awoke to find movers rearranging the furniture in the rotunda. They’d dragged the settee in front of the doorway, rolled up the rug and shoved it to the back of the room beside a cluster of tables and candelabras. One worked to take the candle sconces down from the walls while another hauled away an oversized urn. “The first on a long list of overdue renovations,” Vivienne briskly explained. “I do hope you’re not terribly inconvenienced, darling.”

For a moment it seemed as if he might argue. He didn’t. Instead he surveyed his wrecked workspace with a defeated frown and asked, “Where is my chair?”

“Your what?” A flawless imitation of surprise danced too close to mockery. “Oh my. How curious. It seems to have disappeared. Ah well—I’m sure it will turn up eventually.”

In a rare act of uncharacteristic clumsiness Vivienne accidentally knocked over an inkwell, ruining the papers scattered atop his desk. “Oops,” she blandly intoned. A flick of ink-stained fingernails speckled the stone floor black. “Clumsy me.”

 


	2. Sera.

**Sera.**

Sera knew something had gone wonky. Could just feel it, yeah? Inky hadn’t said anything, hadn’t even done anything, really, but Sera always knew when something ugly had gone off. She didn’t know it was something big until Lilith returned to the tavern table with a third ale and tossed it back before Sera even got halfway through her first.

“You alright and all that?” she asked, and Lilith’s smile still looked all pleased and peachy, like everything was just normal.

“Fine,” she assured.

Sera always knew, though.

She held Inky’s hair back while she hurled up her lunch in a wash bucket on the floor of Sera’s room. Between dry heaves she looked out into the empty air and said as if to no one, “We broke up.”

It took Sera a moment to understand what she meant. For realization to click. “You and elfy?” she asked, eyes going wide. “What, like for good?”

“Yeah. For good.”

There were whole loads of things Sera wanted to say in response to that. Words were hard, though, and Sera had never been good at the kind that made ugly things feel better.

“You want to talk about it?” she asked instead.

“No.”

“Right. Kay. Want some water?”

“Yes, please.”

They went back downstairs once Lilith had emptied her stomach and fixed her face. Sera watched her order another round, and felt that same sort of wonky off-ness.

The second time Lilith threw up over the side of the ramparts wall. All the wine she’d sucked down came back up in a sour swell of ghoulish red, spattering the stones with ugly pink stains. Sera watched her dab at the corners of her mouth with a crumpled handkerchief.

“Sure you don’t want to talk about anything?” she asked again. “You all good and stuff?”

“Yes.”

“Want me to beat him up for you? Put an arrow right in his knee.”

“No.”

“Want to call it a night, maybe?”

Lilith neatly wound her mussed hair back into a ponytail. Straightened her shoulders up nice and square. Wiped her chin. “No,” she assured. “I’m good.”

Back in the tavern she announced to the cheers of a drunken crowd that the next round was on her, grin all pleased and peachy-looking, but Sera didn’t really feel like drinking anymore.

On their way back to the castle that night Sera stopped at intervals to rub Lilith’s back while she vomited into the bushes.

“Get it all out,” she encouraged. She tucked a loose strand of hair back behind Lilith’s ear as she heaved up beer and bile. “And then we’ll get some water, yeah? Snatch up some bread from the kitchens. Maybe a pie. Get something in your stomach to soak up all that sick.”

Lilith gurgled a response that sort of sounded like _“I’m fine,”_ but Sera couldn’t be sure anymore.

“Just get it out,” she softly encouraged. “You’ll feel better.”

Sera didn’t like Solas. Liked even less that he’d taken up with Inky, who she liked very much. But _this_ —with the sad-drinking and gut-hurling and peachy-looking smiles that weren’t peachy at all—wasn’t ever what she wanted.

 

For the next week Solas woke up to lizards in his bed sheets. To missing breeches and wobbling chair legs and scrawled-over pages in books. Somehow a nest of wasps found their way into the rotunda. _(“Guess someone left a door open, yeah?”)_ A suspicious number of dead rats began appearing atop his desk. _(“Prolly the cat, innit?”)_ Someone had mixed something _right_ nasty into all those fancy paints of his. _(“You sure they’re not supposed to be that color?”)_

Inexplicably, the frequency with which he stubbed his toe or clipped his hip on various pieces of furniture increased dramatically. (And okay, Sera was actually pretty proud of that one—took her days of moving all his furniture about half an inch to the left every night, but frigging _worth it_ in the end.)

They were hunting dragonlings in the Hinterlands when Sera had a teensy little accident. Her bow was pulled back, eyes narrowed on her target…and then she caught a glimpse of Solas out of the corner of her eye.

It was an accident. Honest. Wasn’t _her_ fault she tripped on some stupid rock. Wasn’t her fault she loosed her arrow about a meter down and to the right.

It wasn’t like she _meant_ to shoot him in the knee.

 


	3. Dorian.

**Dorian.**

Dorian had felt something was off when Lavellan left at night with Solas and returned too soon through Skyhold’s gates alone. He knew with dreadful certainty something was wrong the very instant he saw her face.

It was late. Too late. He saw her ride by in the dim glow of torchlight on his way out of the tavern, but she must not have noticed him waving. He meandered down to the stables only to find her sitting against the barn wall, knees drawn close to her chest.

She’d been crying.

“He left me.” A dull and emotionless admission. Her face crumpled, and suddenly her voice spiked in a sob. “Solas. He just…left.”

Oh. Oh, no…

In truth Dorian had never particularly approved of her and Solas’ little tryst—had told her as much from the start—but he doubted that was what she wanted to hear right now. He took a seat on the ground beside her. Softened his voice. “I’m sorry,” he offered. It wasn’t enough, but he offered it still. “Truly. I…know what he meant to you.”

Lilith sobbed quietly into her hands, shoulders shaking with each broken inhale. Maker, he wished he were better at this. Unsure how to help, Dorian simply let her cry.

“If you ask me,” he quipped, “you’re better off without him.”

“I don’t want to be better,” she pleaded. “I just want him. Why can’t I have this? Why can’t I have just this _one_ thing that’s mine?” She cried so hard her body shook. “ _Why do they always leave?”_

Dorian…wasn’t sure how to answer that. He drew close with his arm around her shoulder, but somehow it only made her cry harder.

“What did I do?” she asked, but he had no answer to that. “What’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing’s wrong with you,” he assured, “other than having terrible taste in men.” He pulled her tighter while she cried, babbling on in hopes of saying something right. Anything. “I always told you that you were too good for him, didn’t I? Certainly too pretty. I believe Josephine keeps all your myriad marriage proposals in a special little drawer somewhere—you could pluck one out at random and instantly find a more deserving man. Or better, a woman. Since Maker knows none of these southern barbarians will be as handsome as me.”

Weak laughter bubbled up through a surge of tears. “I know,” she said with a shaky smile. “You’ve ruined all other men for me.”

“A habit of mine, as it were.”

“I just…” The smile sunk, jaw trembling. “It was good. Everything was going so _good_. I thought- ” The rest of that sentence died with a wet sniffle. “…what did I do? I just want to know what I did. I just- I thought we were good; how did I _ruin_ it? What did I do wrong?”

“You did nothing wrong. The man is an idiot, clearly.”

She took a stuttering breath that never seemed to reach her lungs. Stared out into nothing with puffy red eyes. When she spoke, voice cracked and small, Dorian no longer saw their fearless Inquisitor. No longer saw that proud woman with the cutting stare and ruby grin who felled a thousand enemies.

_“Why doesn’t he want me?”_

Dorian saw a girl. A small Dalish thing, far from home, crying alone on the ground.

His arm squeezed tighter around her. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “What exactly happened? What did he say?”

Lilith sniffled, lips pursed in a quivering line, and told him. Told him of the moonlit grove. The kiss. The vallaslin, the argument, the bitter fight and cold words. Told him how he’d left her alone in that beautiful, cursed place with her ugly tattooed face and pleading words. Told him how he’d turned his back, and walked away.

“I love him,” she sobbed. “Why can’t he love me?”

Dorian wished he could answer.

 

When he saw Solas the next morning he didn’t even speak to him. Just walked up, halted in front of him, and before Solas could utter a word slapped him flat across the cheek.

Solas didn’t react. Didn’t even flinch. He took a breath and cleared his throat, cheek burning red. “I see you have spoken to Lilith,” he calmly observed. As if it was just some trivial exchange. As if Dorian hadn’t found her crying alone in the dark. “Are you done, or was once satisfying enough?”

“You had no right.”

“As I recall, you never wanted us involved in the first place.”

“She didn’t deserve for it to end like that. She didn’t deserve _any_ of that.”

“It was kinder to end it now rather than later. Before- ”

Dorian cut him off, fury seething behind his teeth. “End it _now?_ So, what, has this been the plan from the very beginning then? Did you happen to let Lilith know she was just a temporary fling to you? Because I’m quite sure she was under a very different impression, my friend.”

The detached politeness of his tone only made Dorian angrier. “I have discussed all I intend to. My private business with the Inquisitor is not your concern.”

“It bloody well is my concern!” he shouted, voice rising beyond his control. “She’s my _friend!_ ”

“And she is fortunate to have you. But there is nothing more to discuss here. Leave it.”

Dorian had a dozen biting aspersions at the ready, but fury sizzled down to cold apathy. “You’re right,” he said. “I suppose there’s nothing left to say. I wish you the best, Solas. Even if you won’t wish it for her.” When he whipped back to storm away he almost expected Solas to stop him. To protest, or argue, or even just _apologize_.

He didn’t. He let Dorian go, and said nothing at all.

Dorian would take no further action against him. He’d said all he wanted to say, had made his feelings known, and to push it further would have been petty. Childish.

That said…

He could honestly say he had no idea how the occasional book managed to fall over the library railing and plummet into the rotunda.

He _certainly_ had no idea how so very many of them narrowly missed Solas’ head.

 


	4. Iron Bull.

**Iron Bull.**

The Iron Bull would be lying if he said he didn’t see it coming.

Not that he was rooting for a breakup—he actually liked Solas, weird as he was, and in a lot of ways he was pretty good for Lavellan. Solas was all temperance and discipline and quiet wisdom, and that balanced out well with Lavellan’s recklessness and aggression and sharp, cutting wit. Opposites attract, or whatever. In a way they almost complemented each other.

Almost.

In a more _realistic_ way they clashed—and sometimes fuckin’ _violently_. Solas was too cold and Lilith didn’t know how to be anything but searing hot, and Bull knew enough about disasters to see where that kind of collision led. They had a lot of fun—had a lotta sex, which he’d overheard too many damn times—but they also couldn’t operate without hurting each other, and Bull picked up on that shit before anyone else. Probably before even they did. You can’t put two stubborn assholes together and expect it to end well.

Cold winds and hot breezes only ever came together in a storm.

Not that he was gonna say that to Lilith. He might have lost his status as Ben-Hassrath but he wasn’t an _idiot._

Well.

Maybe he was an idiot, but he wasn’t looking to lose a limb today.

 

He found her in the tavern that night. Alone for the moment. He seized the rare opportunity while it was open, and took a seat beside her without waiting for invitation.

He didn’t bother with small talk. Lilith didn’t have the patience, and neither of them had the time.

“Hey. Heard about you and Solas.”

Her answer was casual, dismissive. Calculatingly so. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Here to tell me you’re sorry for my loss?”

“Nah, not my style. Never understood the point of apologizing on someone else’s behalf.”

“Here to buy me a drink, then?”

“Hey, you still owe _me_ a drink; don’t think pulling the sympathy card is going to get you off the hook. Besides. You don’t seem like you need a free drink right now.”

She laughed. An effort that was almost convincing. Almost. “And what do I seem like I need, Bull? A shoulder to cry on? A sympathetic ear to confess my woes to?”

“Yeah, right. As if that’s _your_ style. No, if you wanted to say something you’d already have said it. Probably to a cheering crowd hanging on your every word.” New musings led his train of thought to wander. “Maybe with a banner…”

“Oh, always with a banner.”

Bull could envision that image, alright. The woman hadn’t built herself an iron reputation without a proper understanding of theatrics. It may have taken him a while, but he felt like he’d finally pinned Lilith down pretty well. At least well enough to anticipate her needs.

Maybe some other things, too.

“But you’re not the wallowing type,” he pointed out. “I don’t think ‘sympathy’ is what you’re looking for."

She cocked her head, propping her chin in her hand with a smirking little smile and a wide-eyed stare meant to mimic curiosity. “And what is it I’m really looking for?”

He shrugged. “Honestly? Nothing, probably. You’re not exactly the type to need help with handling your own shit.” His eye flickered back to her, casual façade betraying the simmering of something darker. “But, ah. You ever need to… _release_ some of that tension, maybe let out some frustrations…you know where to find me.”

She quirked an eyebrow, but the gesture suggested more amusement than confusion. Nothing he’d ever said had caught Lilith off guard before; he didn’t expect to start now. He wasn’t sure he was capable of it at this point.

The coy smile she presented radiated something ominous. “I can’t tell if that’s an offer to fight or to fuck.”

“Why not both, am I right?”

She laughed, long and loud. When she finally stopped it was only to wave down the bartender. “A drink for my friend here,” she ordered, laughter still coloring her words warm. “And two for me.”

“You’re a real friend, boss.”

“No I’m not,” she countered. “They’re all going on your tab.”

 

* * *

 

The Iron Bull would be lying if he said he didn’t see it coming.

It was late. He’d barely swung shut his bedroom door when a sharp and decisive series of knocks drew him back. He knew who it was before he even opened it. The Iron Bull was a lot of things, but he knew people—and at the end of the day, with all the dressings and fancy titles stripped away, the Inquisitor was just another person.

Lilith stood waiting for him, clear-eyed and steady-handed. A woman on a mission. Whatever pretense of coyness she’d put on before had long since vanished.

She didn’t bother with a greeting.

“That offer still on the table?”

Yeah. Bull saw this coming, alright. He couldn’t help but smirk. “Which one, the fighting or fucking?”

She laughed; pushed past him without waiting for invitation and pulled the door swiftly shut behind her. Her next words were casual, dismissive. Maybe calculatingly so.

“I’ll give you two chances to guess.”

Bull knew her well enough to need only one.

 

He gave Solas the same offer the next night, which went about as well as expected. A cold dismissal, not even a ‘thank you’—yeah, Bull saw that coming. Half a hundred shades of cold didn’t lend well to the kind of services the Iron Bull offered. 

It made the soft knock on his door that night all the more surprising.

Solas offered no greeting. No cordial preamble. He asked in a voice far too certain, "Does your previous offer still stand?"

Now _that,_ he'd admit, he did not see coming.

 


End file.
